UNCOMMONS

Nate is joined on this episode by Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault.

Nate is joined on this episode by Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault for a wide-ranging discussion on Canada’s environmental policy, the work being done to combat attempts by the Conservatives to undermine that policy, and the importance of communicating what is being done to ensure that any progress is lasting.

Steven Guilbeault was first elected as the Member of Parliament for Laurier—Sainte-Marie in 2019. He has previously served as Minister of Canadian Heritage. Prior to politics, he was known for his activism with Green Peace and as the founder of Équiterre, the largest environmental organization in Quebec.

To read more of Nate’s writing on the carbon price below:

Just because it rhymes doesn’t mean it’s right.

Do you want to save the planet?

Good. Me too.

To do that, polluters should pay. It’s only common sense.

Otherwise, polluting is costless for individuals while we all bear significant collective costs. The costs of wildfires and other disasters, the costs of smog, the costs to our kids of a less livable world.

The answer is simple: a price signal to make polluters change their behaviour and pollute less. We might even call it a price on pollution.

Since the goal is to change behaviour, not to make anyone worse off, we can recycle the revenue directly to households to make them whole. Let’s call it a carbon rebate.

This is smart policy, even if it might be difficult politics.

Leaders embrace these challenges, defend smart policy, and educate people to bring them along. In contrast, current conservatives rhyme cheap slogans – “axe the tax” and “spike the hike” – to dumb down our discourse and dismantle smart policy.

According to William Nordhaus, one of the 2018 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Canada is showing the world how carbon pricing can best work. Or, there are talk radio hosts who repeatedly call the price a penalty on ordinary Canadians.

Who are you going to believe?

Debating the price on pollution on Newstalk1010 with Jerry Agar

For those who want a deeper dive, here’s a rundown on how the price on pollution works efficiently, how the rebate gives most Canadians more cash than they pay, and why “technology not taxes” is an alliterative joke on our collective future.

Pricing pollution works.

Yes, price signals work. Even better, they work cost-effectively by harnessing the power of the market.

As the price of polluting increases, the market seeks out cleaner alternatives and businesses innovate to meet that demand.

Carbon pricing has been in place in BC since 2008. It’s used in dozens of jurisdictions around the world. And it’s a significant part of our climate action plan.

Here’s some quick back of the napkin math:

• In 2015, Environment Canada projected 2030 emissions at 815 Mt under business as usual (i.e. conservative inaction). A recent independent analysis of that “no climate policy” scenario puts the number at 775 Mt.

• With a suite of serious policies in place, in progress, and announced since that time, projected 2030 emissions now stand at 467 Mt, assuming stringent implementation of all policies announced/in development.

• On Environment Canada’s assessment, carbon pricing overall (industrial + consumer) accounts for 79 Mt reductions by 2030. Or almost a quarter of the overall drop from business as usual in 2015.

The Canadian Climate Institute recently published an assessment of projected emission reductions between 2025-2030, and determined that the consumer price (disaggregated from industrial pricing) is the 4th most impactful policy, responsible for around 10% of the projected emission reductions from policies currently in place.

The CCI further notes that “as designed, the fuel charge would have a larger impact over time as emitters invest in new technology and assets.”

Carbon rebates are fair.

The purpose of the price is to change behaviour, not to generate revenue.

At least 90% of the revenue is rebated directly to individuals who file their taxes. And there’s a top-up for rural Canadians.

The rebate makes 8 out of 10 of households better off on a cash transfer basis (taxes paid, rebate received), as determined by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Only the top 20% pays more than they receive back. Why? Because they pollute more.

According to StatsCan modelling, 94% of households earning $50,000 or less will receive more in the rebate than they pay in the price.

Now, there’s a legitimate debate to be had about the economic costs of different climate action. I’ll get to that in a moment and how the PBO has dealt with it.

There’s also a legitimate complaint to be made that the other 10% of revenue has not yet been distributed to businesses and other institutions, as promised. For simplicity in communication, I prefer that all of the revenue is returned through the rebate, whereas a Conservative colleague suggested to me recently that he’d be more supportive if the revenue paid for adaptation efforts. I’m fine with all of the above.

What I’m not fine with is the repeated lie that the price on pollution is responsible for people lining up at food banks.

Pierre Poilievre isn’t going to help poor people.

It is deeply cynical and wrong to trade on the real stress and struggle of so many to kill the most cost-effective way of reducing pollution.

And yet, Poilievre consistently tells us that food bank usage is at a record high and that axing the tax will “bring home affordable food.”

You’ve almost got to admire the liar. Because it is an incredible lie.

Yes, food bank usage is at a record high. Mostly Conservative Premiers, responsible for administering welfare and disability income supports, should be ashamed of the pitiful benefit levels for those in need.

No, food bank usage is not at a record high because of the price on pollution. The affordability crisis is driven by 20%+ inflation in food and shelter costs over the last couple of years, the latter driven partly by high interest rates.

As economists Tombe and Winter put it:

“With the latest data, we find that the gradually increasing indirect taxes, including carbon taxes, have caused overall consumer prices to be only 0.6% higher in October 2023 than they were in January 2015.”

These are effects, to be sure, but they are orders of magnitude smaller than the actual increases in prices we’ve seen in Canada.

Carbon pricing is definitively not to blame for affordability challenges.”

If Poilievre cared about poor people, he wouldn’t weaponize their real hurt to attack unrelated climate policies. Instead, he would champion expanding the Canada Workers Benefit and and delivering a substantive Canada Disability Benefit, among other poverty reduction measures.

Finally, it’s worth noting that low-income households (the bottom quintile) remain significantly better off after the rebate, even taking into account the PBO’s additional economic analysis. So no, the carbon price isn’t sending people to food banks.

And that’s assuming the PBO’s analysis is complete, which it isn’t.

What should we make of the PBO report?

Every party is quoting the PBO and it’s caused a frustrating amount of confusion.

To recap, the PBO tells us that most households are better off on a fiscal basis. In other words, most households receive more from the rebate than they pay in the price.

However, the PBO goes on to say that, accounting for both fiscal and economic costs, most households will be worse off due to the carbon price’s modest hit to GDP.

I met with parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux and his team this afternoon with two concerns about their economic analysis (they were very generous with their time).

First, the economic literature seems mixed on this question. For example, in this macro analysis of carbon taxation in the EU, published in the American Economic Journal, the authors “find no evidence for a negative impact on employment or GDP growth but rather find a zero to modest positive impact.”

The PBO’s answer (paraphrased): the authors used a different model and we stand by ours. Fair enough.

Second, there is a major caveat, namely that the report “does not attempt to account for the economic and environmental costs of climate change.”

Nor does it account for the costs of alternative, more costly, climate action.

The PBO’s answer (paraphrased): we recognize the costs of climate change and attempted to assess those costs in a separate report. Climate action is like sending weapons to support Ukraine; it might be easy to quantify the upfront costs and hard to quantify the long-term benefits, but it’s still the right thing to do. While our mandate was to assess the cost of the specific proposal before us, we acknowledge that pricing pollution is the most cost effective measure to reduce emissions.

I respect the PBO a great deal and think they do excellent work as a general rule. Still, it remains hard to understand what insight the economic analysis adds to the debate, without a fuller accounting for the costs of inaction or alternative action.

After all, as Tombe and Winter reiterate: “Importantly, were it not for carbon pricing, Canada would have to adopt other, less-efficient policies that would have an even larger drag on growth and therefore larger costs to households – all without the current rebates.”

“Technology not taxes” isn’t a serious plan.

Incredibly, Poilievre calls the price on pollution a “scam” in the same breath that he offers the snake oil of “technology not taxes.”

Again, if there isn’t a price on pollution, alternatives measures will be more expensive.

We certainly aren’t going to see equivalent climate action from the private sector if businesses don’t have incentives to innovate. The bottom line trumps ESG every time.

So if you want technology, it will be left to more costly regulations or government subsidies. And where do government subsidies come from?

They come from taxes. Without the rebate.

Axing serious climate action.

Paul Romer, the other 2018 Nobel Prize winning economist, has rightly said that “the problem is not knowing what to do. The problem is getting consensus to act.”

And that’s what this is really about. It’s a relentless conservative campaign to undercut serious climate action, and destroy any consensus to act.

With the Liberals in government, we have finally seen serious climate action.

The Canadian Climate Institute estimates that the policies currently in place will prevent 226 Mt of emissions in 2030. Policies under development will prevent a further 43 Mt. Additional announced policies should account for another 39 Mt.

We can’t let up on serious implementation, and even then we still stand to fall about 30 Mt short of a target that should already be stronger.

So there is more to do. For example, considering the record profits of oil and gas companies in recent years, we could mandate that excess profits be invested back in efforts to reduce emissions, clean up environmental damage, and support sustainable jobs. UK Conservatives should not be more progressive on this front than we are.

We also haven’t been without missteps, including and especially the $35 billion pipeline expansion sinkhole.

But this is equally indisputable: in 8 years, this Liberal government has put policies in place to bend the emissions curve by 30% from where it would have been otherwise, with further policies on the way to bend it by another 10%.

So call it imperfect, but that is incredible progress all the same.

And so much of it will be undone if Poilievre and his new reform party have their way. Not only the market-based price on pollution, but the oil and gas emissions cap, the clean electricity regulations, and more.

We can’t afford to spike this progress or axe serious climate action.

Inaction is just too costly, both to our finances and our future.

And that is what is really at stake.

Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens (almost) all voted for a ceasefire, expanded humanitarian assistance, and respect for human rights.

We debated and voted today on an NDP motion with respect to Canada’s actions to promote peace in the Middle East.

At the tail end of the parliamentary debate, House Leader Steve MacKinnon introduced a series of government amendments.

As I told the CBC last week, the original text wasn’t perfect by any means. But, in broad strokes, it was a push to support human rights. And Canada’s role should be to defend human rights and peace.

The amendments largely addressed the motion’s shortcomings and ensured Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc and Greens were (almost entirely) united.

Of course, the Conservatives still voted against it.

For simplicity, I’ll skip the preamble and get to the calls to action noting both original (unbolded or struck out) and amended language (bolded), alongside some thoughts on each.

1. Demand an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages, and that Hamas must lay down its arms;

This is, rightly, the first call to action because it’s the most important one. It’s past time for the violence to end and for the hostages to be freed. 

Calling for a ceasefire may have proven more controversial back in October, despite the fact it was obvious where things were headed even then. But it’s certainly not controversial now.

2. Suspend all trade in military goods and technology with Israel Cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance with Canada’s arms export regime and increase efforts to stop the illegal trade of arms, including to Hamas;

We should do all we can to support international efforts to crack down on the illegal trade of arms, including to Hamas. 

Of course it’s more complicated when it comes to suspending trade in military goods/tech with an ally. But, as I considered here, we have obligations we must meet pursuant to the Arms Trade Treaty and the Export and Import Permits Act. 

I’ve already called for Global Affairs to review whether our military exports to Israel comply with those obligations and said that we should pause exports as Global Affairs reviews and reconsiders its position. This appears to have taken place based on media reports, and the text accomplishes the same.

3. Immediately reinstate funding and Ensure long-term continued funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to meet the dire humanitarian need, and support the independent investigation engage with the United Nations internal investigations and independent review process, and ensure implementation of necessary long-term governance reforms and accountability measures;

Again, I wrote about this here, and argued that the original suspension decision was misguided given the acute humanitarian crisis on the ground. 

This issue is now moot, as the government has already lifted the suspension. It’s useful to note here that Canadian funding has not been impacted, as the next funding round was always set to take place in April. And the amendments better reflect the additional need for longer-term reforms outside of the immediate crisis.

4. Support the prosecution of all crimes and violations of international law committed in the region;, and

One of the weaknesses with the ICJ hearing is that it’s limited to the very high threshold of genocide, and that Hamas is not a party despite its crimes. 

We should support an independent accountability mechanism for any breaches of international humanitarian law by actors on both sides.

5. Support the work of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court;

While I view the genocide case before the ICJ as a weak one given the insufficient evidence on the question of intent, we should continue to respect the processes at the ICJ and the ICC. That means making it clear that the ICJ’s provisional orders should be respected, which is especially important for the next point on the list.

5. Demand unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza; 

I would have put this up front as the second call to action. In a vote of 16-1 (only Justice Sebutinde dissenting), the ICJ ordered Israel to ensure the immediate and effective provision of humanitarian assistance. 

Unfortunately, humanitarian assistance has not been provided in keeping with that order. It’s at the point where the US, Canada and other allies have mused about plans to air lift aid, an ineffective alternative measure usually reserved for natural disasters and not a border blockade maintained by an ally.

6. Ensure Canadians trapped in Gaza can reach safety in Canada and lift the arbitrary cap of 1,000 and expand access to the temporary resident visa applications;

While Minister Miller has fairly noted that it’s very difficult to expand the program if no one is getting through, he’s also said that there is no hard cap and reiterated that it’s a targeted program for those with loved ones in Canada. We should expand the program where possible and continue diplomacy to make it work.

7. Ban Sanction extremist settlers from Canada, impose sanctions on Israeli officials who incite genocide, and maintain sanctions on Hamas leaders;

Countries are rightly taking action against extremist settlers. Hamas is a terrorist organization that can have no place in the future governance of Gaza.

The initial drafting was a little clumsy, as any incitement of genocide should be punished.

8. Reaffirm that settlements are illegal under international law and that settlements and settler violence are serious obstacles to a negotiated two-state solution, and advocate for an end to the decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories and work towards a two-state solution; and

This is consistent with long-standing foreign policy, even if successive governments have consistently failed to act consistently with it.

As Jon Allen, Canada’s former Ambassador to Israel, wrote back in October: “ultimately, the only way to stop the current and future cycles of violence is to deal with the underlying causes of the conflict, i.e. end the Occupation and negotiate a two-state solution.” He’s right.

9. Work with international partners to actively pursue the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including towards the establishment of Officially recognize the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution, and maintain Canada’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist and to live in peace with its neighbours.

The original provision was interpreted by some as a unilateral recognition that would rewrite decades of foreign policy and reward Hamas.

Of course, for there to be a two-state solution there need to be two states. Just as obviously, it’s impossible to recognize the State of Palestine in any realistic manner so long as Hamas controls Gaza.

So I always read the motion as calling for the government to actively work towards recognizing the State of Palestine, and to renew efforts much more seriously in the face of a Netanyahu government that refuses to even entertain the possibility.

As UK Foreign Minister David Cameron has recently said (for the Conservatives in the back): Palestinians must have “a political horizon so that they can see that there is going to be irreversible progress to a two-state solution” and “we should be starting to set out what a Palestinian state would look like – what it would comprise, how it would work. As that happens, we, with allies, will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations. This could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”

And more from Cameron (because we don’t have Conservatives who talk like this): “I don’t think that should happen at the start of the process because I think that takes all the pressure off the Palestinians to reform. But it shouldn’t have to wait till the end,” else Israel remain the gatekeeper of Palestinian statehood.

The amendment is ultimately softer than Cameron’s language, but it helpfully clarified that there is no useful unilateral recognition of the State of Palestine in the circumstances and it returns us to text that is consistent with the long-standing foreign policy of a negotiated settlement.

More importantly, the amendments refocused the motion on what matters most: an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages, an expansion of humanitarian aid, and the protection of human rights.

It also ensured more MPs voted to support the motion and made much clearer where the core disagreement lies in all of this.

Most Canadians and most parliamentarians support a ceasefire.

Conservatives don’t.

On this episode Nate is joined by MP for Victoria and NDP environment critic Laurel Collins.

On this episode, Nate is joined by MP for Victoria and NDP environment critic Laurel Collins. The discussion covers a range of issues including Nate and Laurel’s shared desire for a youth climate corps, Canada’s climate progress more broadly, and Laurel’s work to address domestic abuse.

At the end of the episode, Laurel highlights a virtual event taking place on Monday Monday, March 18th where young activists & MPs from across party lines will discuss the creation of a national Youth Climate Corps.

Click here to RSVP.

Lastly, starting with this episode, you will be able to watch full episodes of the Uncommons podcast on YouTube.

Click here to watch.

Nate is joined in this episode by Housing, Infrastructure, & Communities Minister Sean Fraser.

Nate is joined on this episode by Housing, Infrastructure, & Communities Minister Sean Fraser to talk about the single most important issue in this country at the moment: housing affordability.

The lack of housing affordability is a generational challenge. Young people are worse off than their parents. It is as simple as that. And it’s also an economic productivity challenge. Young people are leaving in significant numbers because they can’t afford to stay and that has knock-on negative consequences for labour productivity, and talent retention.

Sean is relatively new in the role, and it certainly seems as if he’s been firing on all cylinders ever since taking it on. While we’ve seen steadily growing federal action on social housing and homelessness since 2015. We’ve seen more serious action in recent months to address restrictive zoning, waive GST on rental construction, and to get all kinds of housing built.

So how does the Housing Minister stack up his plan against the competition? What more can and should we be doing to get housing built? And how can we best communicate our plan of action when the scale of the challenge is so great, and it takes time for new policies to be realized on the ground?

Ontario talks about financial literacy in education and shows little financial literacy in managing education.

International students bring great benefits to our country, contributing to our communities and adding talent to our economy. It’s also true that the program has grown rapidly and unsustainably in recent years.

We should continue to welcome the best and brightest, especially in areas of great need.

We should not see international students primarily as a means to balance the post-secondary books.

And yet, unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened here in Ontario.

As the CBC reports, “[i[n Ontario, the data shows foreign student recruitment has spiked significantly when Premier Doug Ford took office.”

And this: “Ontario’s public colleges alone accounted for more than 40% of the 435,000 study permits issued nationwide in 2023.”

Conestoga grew from 8,295 international students in 2020/21 to 30,395 students in 2023.

In that same time period, Fleming jumped from 1,113 students to 8,849. Niagara went from 2,286 students to 11,199. Fanshawe doubled from 5,544 to 11,706.

Algoma University grew from 747 students to 9,329.

International students now represent 2.5% of all residents in Canada and 3.5% of Ontario’s population.

Without housing and adequate supports, the rapid growth has bolstered post-secondary balance sheets at the expense of student well-being.

Two years ago, Ontario’s Auditor General made a straightforward recommendation: “do not further increase dependency on international enrolments without a longer-term strategy in place to address the risks of this approach for financial sustainability.”

Two years later, a longer-term strategy is nowhere to be found.

How did we get here?

You’ll often hear the blame assigned to private colleges. Minister Miller has described them as the “equivalent of puppy mills that are just churning out diplomas.” I’ll admit that this was my initial instinct as well (also we should stop actual puppy mills while we’re at it).

But it’s a wider problem than that, and it mostly lands at the feet of Premier Ford.

To start with, Doug Ford’s government has brutally mismanaged the post-secondary education sector.

It brought austerity to public spending at the same time as it froze domestic tuition after a 10% cut. And the numbers are bad.

Here are some choice quotes from Higher Education’s 2023 Report:

“Now Ontario is an outlier. No province has underfunded postsecondary education more and no province’s institutions have found so many ways to raise money from private sources.

On a per-student basis, the province funds universities at 57% of the average of the other 9 provinces; on the college side it is a mere 44%.

It is tenth out of ten in every inter-provincial comparison of financing.

Merely to get the province to reach ninth place among provinces for funding of colleges and universities requires an additional investment of $3.6 billion per year

To raise spending to the average of the other 9 provinces requires $7.1 billion per year in additional funding. Ontario’s funding situation is, in a word, abysmal.”

Without new public funding or domestic tuition revenue, post-secondary institutions looked to the only source of new revenue available to them.

And it worked. International student tuition revenue has offset provincial austerity. Consider Conestoga again: thanks largely to the growth in international students, tuition fee revenue jumped from $280 million in 2022 to $389 million in 2023.

As the Higher Education Report puts its: “100% of all increased operating spending over the past 13 years has come from international student fees.”

Ontario wasn’t just a passive participant either.

Under Ford, it actively promoted the expansion of public college-private partnerships, enabling public colleges across Ontario to admit international students, take large tuition fees, and outsource the teaching (using the public college curriculum) to private colleges in the GTA.

In effect, it enabled a workaround from the federal restriction on post-graduate work permits for private colleges, and allowed public colleges to subsidize their main campus operations on the backs of international students at satellite sites.

Just as we’ve seen massive growth in public college enrolment, we’ve also seen massive growth in the number of public college students at private satellite campuses.

A 2017 report recommended that these arrangements be shut down, concluding that they “do not serve an important public purpose and are an inefficient way to provide needed revenue to colleges.” As expert Alex Usher explains, the Wynne government moved to do just that before losing the 2018 election, and they have instead proliferated under Ford ever since.

The federal government isn’t entirely innocent here. The Harper government published a strategy to double international students, and successive governments have encouraged the international student program to be used as a means to address labour force challenges and accommodated its use as a path to permanent residency with valued education an afterthought.

No doubt the feds could also have acted more quickly. But the fact remains that provinces are ultimately responsible and that the feds are now acting to clean up a mess that is mostly of Ontario’s making.

As Marc Miller put it recently: “We just need the provinces in question, in this case Ontario, to assume their responsibility.”

Or, as Mike Moffatt put it: “The provinces should’ve acted first…But it’s good to see the federal government bring some rationality back to the number of international students.”

The way forward.

In the absence of any leadership from Ontario, the federal government has made a number of significant changes, including:

• No longer granting post-grad work permits to international students who complete public college degrees outsourced to private colleges.

• Capping study visas this year at approximately 360,000, a 35% overall reduction from last year. In Ontario, the cap as applied will likely represent a 50% drop.

Given 80% of international students are currently working more than 20 hours per week, Minister Miller will next need to reset a reasonable cap on that too (which should probably be more stringent than the 30 hours he’s floated).

Overall, Alex Usher called it a “pretty well-balanced” package.

In response, Ford complained that he wasn’t consulted on the federal changes, which Minister Miller called “complete garbage.”

Even if it was true, the Ford government should have seen this coming. According to a Global News report, internal documents show that Ontario was aware it had an “over-reliance” on international students.

Now, with the benefit of full hindsight, the Ford government is still flailing.

It announced a series of changes that were long overdue (ex. ensure programs offered meet labour market needs. Yeah, no kidding. There shouldn’t be a 6:1 ratio between business admin students and those studying healthcare). And it made other changes that were moot after the federal fix (ex. a moratorium on public college-private partnerships).

In a separate move, the province is allowing colleges to offer applied master’s degrees. Given the federal government has enabled post-grad work permits for master’s students, this will be worth keeping an eye on.

Ontario hasn’t yet provided any clarity on allocations under the new cap and its recent announcement of financial support for post-secondary education is weak at best.

Last November, Ontario’s Blue Ribbon panel called for a $2.5 billion investment into post-secondary education. With the federal changes, and a reduction in international student tuition fees, additional financial support will obviously be required.

Earlier this week, the province announced $1.2 billion over three years.

Again, Alex Usher puts it well: “Altogether, between inflation and the loss of international students, the sector was in for a hit of over $2 billion this year. This package maybe covers 20% of that. It is not a serious attempt to put Ontario’s colleges and universities on solid footing. It is, rather, the act of a government that prefers the appearance of solving problems to actually solving them.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a provincial government that preferred actually solving problems?

Instead, we get mismanagement and misdirection.

For a government that talks about financial literacy in education, it shows little financial literacy in managing education.

If young people are the future of this province, and if this is how we treat young people, what does that say about our future?

Imagine if we hadn’t.

7 years ago, we killed electoral reform.

Two weeks ago, we killed the idea again, and you probably didn’t even hear about it.

Of course, M-86 wouldn’t have brought electoral reform to Canada right away. But it would have re-started the conversation through a citizens’ assembly.

Specifically, the parliamentary motion called on the government to establish a citizens’ assembly to “determine if electoral reform is recommended for Canada, and, if so, recommend specific measures that would foster a healthier democracy.”

Despite an EKOS poll showing 76% overall support for the idea (73% of Liberals and 69% of Conservatives), and despite support for the idea at the 2023 Liberal national policy convention, the government opted to vote it down.

It turns out that the government still really doesn’t want to talk about electoral reform.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

CTV News reported that “Trudeau and Singh’s teams quietly planning electoral reform legislation”.

Sounds promising.

Except that the legislation will apparently only do these three things:

• allow for an ‘expanded’ three-day voting period during general elections;

• allow voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and

• improve the mail-in ballot process.

None of this is controversial. But, on the other hand, does any of it really matter?

Go back and reimagine 2015, with the promise of real change in the air. Do these three barely discernible improvements constitute “real change?”

We promise to make every vote count!

We promise a technical change to make voting slightly easier!

Now, I have a long-standing bias in support of electoral reform. Before I was elected, I was involved in some local advocacy with Fair Vote Canada.

As I’ve written before, we live in a representative democracy, and our democracy should be more representative of where we live. I believe in the value of minority parliaments, cooperation, and a less partisan approach to our politics.

I think the see-saw as between different majority governments undermines sensible long-term policy-making.

I’m obviously in the minority in Parliament in thinking this way, given M-86 was soundly defeated 220-101.

Although, it’s worth noting that 39 Liberal MPs voted for M-86, and that number would have been significantly higher had the government not taken a position on the motion and encouraged a free vote instead. Three Conservative MPs even voted for it!

To understand why the two dominant parties in Canadian politics might be skeptical of electoral reform, it’s useful to consider our electoral history.

In the last 20 federal elections (over the last 60 years), the Liberal Party has outperformed its popular vote (i.e. received a higher percentage of seats as compared to its popular vote percentage) a total of 16 out of 20 times (exceptions: 2011, 2008, 1988 and 1984).

Only in 1984 and 2011 was the Liberal Party particularly mistreated by first-past-the-post. In 2011, it received 18.9% of the popular vote and 11% of the seats in the House, while in 1984 it received 28% of the popular vote and only 14.2% of the seats.

In that same time period, Conservative parties outperformed their popular vote percentage 15 out of 20 times (exceptions: 2015, 2000, 1997, 1993, 1968, although only the PC underperformed in 1997 while the Reform Party did not).

1993 was, of course, a particularly bad year for the Progressive Conservatives, with 16% of the popular vote and only 0.7% of the seats in the House.

How does the NDP fare in comparison? Very very badly.

In those same 20 elections, the NDP’s seat count outperformed its popular vote only once. In 2011. And only by 2.8%.

If you add up every percentage they have underperformed the popular vote by since 1962, it comes to a collective 136.9%.

In the interest of completeness, the Bloc Quebecois has outperformed its popular vote 8 out of 10 times since its inception in 1993, the Green Party has never done anything other than underperform through 7 elections since it started in 2004, and the People’s Party of Canada has never had a seat in the House of Common through two elections.

First-past-the-post clearly punishes third and smaller parties in our multi-party system (and provincially that means punishing Liberal Parties for the time being).

Given the stakes here, there seem to be three overall takeaways:

1. Having burned the promise of electoral reform to the ground, the Prime Minister and this Liberal government don’t want to talk about electoral reform ever again.

   
   I believe it’s to the country’s advantage to prevent the near absolute power of a Poilievre Conservative majority government when a majority of Canadians do not want that outcome. But it isn’t necessarily to the Liberal Party’s advantage to move away from FPTP if history is at all an indicator of future success, and Liberal reformers tend to split between ranked ballots and proportional systems (there’s the potential to overcome this, but we’d have to talk about it again!).

2. Despite three supportive MPs, the Conservative leadership and party continues to see electoral reform as a threat. And given the consolidation of PC and Reform/Alliance, it’s no wonder. Vote splitting on the right is limited, and even less likely with Poilievre at the helm, given he speaks the same language as Bernier at times (WEF conspiracies, anti-vaccine mandates, pro-convoy, anti-trans, etc.).

3. This particular NDP leadership hasn’t understood the importance of electoral reform to their own cause. There’s a motion in Parliament backed by your own MP on an issue that your base and many others care about. It is essential to your party’s long-term success. And in a game of electoral chicken, the Liberals definitely do not want to cause an election over a citizens’ assembly on electoral reform with its popularity where it is at the moment.

   If you don’t negotiate support for a citizens’ assembly in these circumstances, perhaps you don’t truly understand that your party has underperformed the popular vote 19 out of 20 times since 1962.

Now, a citizens’ assembly isn’t a total answer.

We’ve had assemblies in Ontario and BC, followed by failed referendums. There’s no guarantee that it leads to change.

But it’s also an opportunity to re-start a conversation that was killed too soon.

And it’s a conversation worth having in a thoughtful way, divorced from partisan interests.

Consider the challenge from the Prime Minister, and others, that a more proportional system “would empower fringe parties.” No doubt, some PR systems do.

A thoughtful answer back would be that one can establish a 5% threshold that parties need to reach to receive top-up seats in the House.

Or one might consider that the greater threat to our democracy is for one of our natural governing parties to be taken over by a radical. Shouldn’t we be more worried about Bernier taking over the Conservative Party (he almost did!), than Bernier representing 5% of the seats in the House of Commons?

Leslyn Lewis and Cheryl Gallant are members of the Conservative Party, holding People’s Party views. Pierre Poilievre wants us to honk for freedom and police bathrooms and he may well be the Prime Minister of Canada.

South of the border, we see an even more extreme example. Donald Trump took over the Republican Party and has a better than decent chance of becoming President of the United States again. I don’t even understand how those words can be real as I write them, but they are.

First-past-the-post might discourage fringe new parties. But it does little to discourage the fringe from taking over existing ones. Which strikes me as worse.

And nothing new here at all, but FPTP also dramatically distorts the amount of power a political party controls in comparison to its popular support.

As I write this, 338 Canada has the Conservatives in the lead with 41% of the popular vote, which would lead to a resounding majority government.

The Liberals (25%), the NDP (19%), the Bloc (7%) and the Greens (5%) collectively account for 56% of the vote. These are all parties that believe in climate change, as just one example. They don’t believe in austerity, or cutting childcare, as another.

At the height of Conservative popularity (or Liberal unpopularity?), at least 56% of Canadians still want a more progressive direction for this country. And yet, because of our electoral system, we may well get saddled with a majority government that axes much more than the most efficient and effective way of reducing GHG emissions.

Imagine if we hadn’t broken our promise on electoral reform.

The most recent statement from the Prime Minister is on point. What additional actions should follow?

The International Court of Justice issued a statement yesterday “that the most recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and in Rafah in particular, ‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences’, as stated by the United Nations Secretary-General.”

Calling it a “perilous situation”, the ICJ did not make any additional orders, but it did emphasize that Israel must fully comply with the existing provisional orders, “including by ensuring the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Nate is joined on this episode by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.

Nate is joined on this episode by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow for a discussion on federal-municipal cooperation, navigating the city’s difficult financial situation, and what she hopes to accomplish with her first budget as mayor.

You can listen to the #UncommonsPod wherever you get your podcast, or at Uncommons.ca where you can also find Nate’s recent substack posts including one on federal-municipal cooperation.

A look back at January 2024.

Parliament is officially back for the 2024 spring session.

On my end, having taken some time to reflect on the provincial race, it’s good to be refocused on federal politics for the remainder of the current Parliament.

In the House, we’re still debating the Fall Economic Statement, which focused on getting housing built (removing GST on rental construction, and $1 billion for social housing, etc.), and addressing affordability concerns (strengthening competition, stabilizing grocery prices, etc.).

With a more immediate impact on affordability, the dental care benefit continues to roll out this year to seniors on a staggered schedule, with all seniors eligible in May. Children under 18 and people with disabilities (with a valid DTC certificate) will be eligible in June. And the program will be open to everyone by 2025.

Through the coming budget, the government will hopefully continue to advance affordability initiatives by realizing its promises with respect to the Canada Disability Benefit and a national school food program, and by expanding its work to get housing built. Most recently, for example, Minister Fraser made low-interest loans available to colleges and universities to build more student housing.

Related, and speaking of colleges and universities, Minister Miller recently announced a two-year cap on student permits. We’ve seen an unsustainable growth in the number of international students to make up for consistent provincial underfunding for higher education. To put it simply: provinces need to step up and provide sustainable funding.

As I mentioned in my last update, I plan to write more this session. I expect to write in the coming weeks on a range of topics, including international students, the price on pollution, and electoral reform.

You can find my recent writing below, including on the subject of assisted dying (the government has now further delayed its expansion), the ICJ case and war in Gaza, and why our government has been and will continue to be a strong partner for the City of Toronto.